The drones behaved this weird in the first room I built. I had no treasure room, but I assume the hive is counted as one as well. In any case the hive wasn't full either. It was right in the beginning of the map. But it also occurred several times later on. I have attached a replay for you to further investigate it.
Perhaps the health petals can be hidden behind by either changing the render-to-texture channel for the petals, or the render-to-texture channel for the dialog and/or the dialog items inside it.
I recall another thing too now speaking of Hydralisks. Are they supposed to attack through wall:p?
One more thing, it seems the map is still performance heavy, though not as much as it was back in the older versions (and I also have a newer computer now). I had 120fps when it started, and in the end it dropped to something like 70. Still, nothing I noticed if I wouldn't have had the fps debugger on, but it's a risk that the drop is much larger for less fortunate computers.
The LOS attack is a common problem in sc2 as you know, BTW I was able to create a validator to fix it, however I still need to attach it to every unit weapon.
The problem is that I will need to make a validator for each skill too and this validator is composed by 7-8 validators so it won't be fun :P
Performance is a lot related to the amount of units in game like walls and room borders.
In fact, with the last version, I was able to change the room usage AI so that units don't need border dummy units anymore. They are still in game so you won't see the difference, when I'm sure the AI works correctly I'll remove them.
The main problem will still be the dungeon borders that I can't remove... let's hope it won't be a too big problem :|
How did you "fix" that attacking through walls?
That might be super interesting for my map, too, because my dungeons are basically the same as your self created dungeons and atm my monsters go berserk through half the dungeon, if they are behind the wall in another room... :(
In general I would only know the structure or what you used to achieve a working result. I can figure out the details myself.
I was going to post a simple map in the future, BTW I did a validator that checks if air distance is <= then pathing distance.
The problem is that I needed to add different checks for each possible range radius, I don't remember why but it seems required :|
Works. :) Thanks a lot!
I'm using 1 combine validator for every range check chunk.
Each chunk has 3 validators: range>=x-1 and range<x validators and pathing validator of pathing_range<x+1. Just insert x for all ranges you want.
Then you only need one special one.
Sadly validators don't take results of other calculations. That's why it's necessary to use one for each range step you want.
Atm I'm using 48 validators combined for that. :S
Exactly, the problem is that you can't read the value directly but you have to do the single checks.
BTW I think that 48 validators are too much, I think I have less of them.
Oh and another shitty thing is that you can set all these validators only for 1 single ability (like attack) but if you want to do the same for other abilities you have to do the whole set of new validators!
Do you have any better idea?
@Bibendus: Go
Why is that?
You have "target position" and "caster unit" in the validators. What's wrong with that?
Every ability should have that... You could change it to "unit/point". Then it might work for anything you might want to do.
So in the end you should have 1 validator that you just add to every ability's called effect.
I'm using range <2, 3,4,5,...,13. So that's why I have that many. So 3 per range (with AND) and 1 that contains all other validators with OR.
The problem is that you need to specify the ability inside the validator and I used attack. When I have to use it for another ability I have to create the new validators :|
What's the validator you are using?
Well, the new version is out with a lot of fixes and improvement.
The next version should be the multiplayer one so stay tuned on my project forum ;)
In the meanwhile I'll try to upload this version on the arcade beta too!
CHANGES
o Decreased dummy units usage for a big performance boost
o Add cap to max amount of feederlings each player can own, the pool size depends on the amount of players in game
o Treasure Room cost x tile decreased
o Added small cost to spore cannons to force the construction of workshops
o Added tooltips in the research UI
o Removed all the placeholder button in the UI
o Disabled the select tool during the defeat animation
o Added creatures LOS check on attacks and special abilities
o Percentage of life requested for creatures to go sleep automatically is now 10% instead of 75%
BUG FIX
o Removed unnecessary text from some UI tips
o Removed black background frame in the research panel UI
o Fixed bug that showed creatures health petals over the research panel UI
o The tech button used to open the research panel UI has been moved and is now visible during battle.net play
o Fixed drones minerals drop AI on heart treasury
o Drones won't try to fortify tiles that are going to be digged
I've added some debugging stuff to help me to get some data while the map is running.
The most important things would be unit count and the active threads.
I've added an integer array to my map that keeps track of the starts and finishes of every thread. So I'm adding 1 as first action and the last action of every thread needs to be the subtraction of 1. Then add a trigger that gives you a list in a string with the index in the array and the value in the array.
That way you can track ingame, if some threads keep running or didn't finish properly (as I don't know if Blizzard fixed the trigger errors not appearing online).
You should be able to add an equal system to your map.
Also, since you are using a lot of buildings in your map, I give you the hint that a lot of visible building images in the fog can lower the fps. You might want to tinker with a system that hides these actors when they are outside the player's vision. Implementing sonething like that was much easier in my case because it's using fixed areas. But you might be able to order the playable area into multiple square regions and check the necessity of visible actors there.
At least that was the cause of my map slowing down over time.
Oh, and make sure you destroy all created text tags, if they aren't required anymore (like after fading out).
Triggers are closing correctly, I can see it with the debugger in single player.
The single thread amount is useless, I need to know the average runtime duration of triggers to detect the worst one.
BTW I don't use buildings on my map, just actors for rooms decorationsand units for dungeon walls (I can't remove them for pathing reasons).
Single actors are not heavy as units so I'm fine, the lag is more CPU/memory leak style.
The thing you said about text tags could be the problem, now I'm going to check if they are deleted correctly
Nope, I completely removed the creatures status baloons trigger but it still lags.
I don't know if it lags less or not, btw yesterday I was able to play and finish my first hive keeper competitive game, ok we were 2vs1 but it was awesome :P
I really need to open the new debug thing online, damnit :|
Im not sure how exactly its called (at school atm), but there is a native function called smth like "open debug window", this allows you to show the debug window in multiplayer.
I worked before 1.5, now it doesn't if more then 1 player are in game and I don't know why :(
It works if I'm playing online alone however, really weird!
Today I released a patch that improves units AI efficiency and it reduced the multiplayer lag for a lot of time and made the game almost playable.. if you want try it ;)
The drones behaved this weird in the first room I built. I had no treasure room, but I assume the hive is counted as one as well. In any case the hive wasn't full either. It was right in the beginning of the map. But it also occurred several times later on. I have attached a replay for you to further investigate it.
Perhaps the health petals can be hidden behind by either changing the render-to-texture channel for the petals, or the render-to-texture channel for the dialog and/or the dialog items inside it.
I recall another thing too now speaking of Hydralisks. Are they supposed to attack through wall:p?
One more thing, it seems the map is still performance heavy, though not as much as it was back in the older versions (and I also have a newer computer now). I had 120fps when it started, and in the end it dropped to something like 70. Still, nothing I noticed if I wouldn't have had the fps debugger on, but it's a risk that the drop is much larger for less fortunate computers.
The LOS attack is a common problem in sc2 as you know, BTW I was able to create a validator to fix it, however I still need to attach it to every unit weapon.
The problem is that I will need to make a validator for each skill too and this validator is composed by 7-8 validators so it won't be fun :P
Performance is a lot related to the amount of units in game like walls and room borders.
In fact, with the last version, I was able to change the room usage AI so that units don't need border dummy units anymore. They are still in game so you won't see the difference, when I'm sure the AI works correctly I'll remove them.
The main problem will still be the dungeon borders that I can't remove... let's hope it won't be a too big problem :|
@Bibendus: Go
How did you "fix" that attacking through walls?
That might be super interesting for my map, too, because my dungeons are basically the same as your self created dungeons and atm my monsters go berserk through half the dungeon, if they are behind the wall in another room... :(
In general I would only know the structure or what you used to achieve a working result. I can figure out the details myself.
@Ahli634: Go
I was going to post a simple map in the future, BTW I did a validator that checks if air distance is <= then pathing distance.
The problem is that I needed to add different checks for each possible range radius, I don't remember why but it seems required :|
Works. :) Thanks a lot!
I'm using 1 combine validator for every range check chunk.
Each chunk has 3 validators: range>=x-1 and range<x validators and pathing validator of pathing_range<x+1. Just insert x for all ranges you want.
Then you only need one special one.
Sadly validators don't take results of other calculations. That's why it's necessary to use one for each range step you want.
Atm I'm using 48 validators combined for that. :S
@Ahli634: Go
Exactly, the problem is that you can't read the value directly but you have to do the single checks.
BTW I think that 48 validators are too much, I think I have less of them.
Oh and another shitty thing is that you can set all these validators only for 1 single ability (like attack) but if you want to do the same for other abilities you have to do the whole set of new validators!
Do you have any better idea?
@Bibendus: Go Why is that?
You have "target position" and "caster unit" in the validators. What's wrong with that?
Every ability should have that... You could change it to "unit/point". Then it might work for anything you might want to do.
So in the end you should have 1 validator that you just add to every ability's called effect.
I'm using range <2, 3,4,5,...,13. So that's why I have that many. So 3 per range (with AND) and 1 that contains all other validators with OR.
The problem is that you need to specify the ability inside the validator and I used attack. When I have to use it for another ability I have to create the new validators :|
What's the validator you are using?
@Bibendus: Go
- CValidatorLocationCompareRange to check for range and pathing range.
- CValidatorCombine for combining with AND and OR.
Oh shit I was using Unit Compare Order target range :P
I tought it was the only one having a pathing flag!!!
Thanks dude, you saved me :P
I'm kinda lazy, if you are going to publish a demo map with the LOS check the community would be grateful!
Well, the new version is out with a lot of fixes and improvement.
The next version should be the multiplayer one so stay tuned on my project forum ;)
In the meanwhile I'll try to upload this version on the arcade beta too!
CHANGES
o Decreased dummy units usage for a big performance boost
o Add cap to max amount of feederlings each player can own, the pool size depends on the amount of players in game
o Treasure Room cost x tile decreased
o Added small cost to spore cannons to force the construction of workshops
o Added tooltips in the research UI
o Removed all the placeholder button in the UI
o Disabled the select tool during the defeat animation
o Added creatures LOS check on attacks and special abilities
o Percentage of life requested for creatures to go sleep automatically is now 10% instead of 75%
BUG FIX
o Removed unnecessary text from some UI tips
o Removed black background frame in the research panel UI
o Fixed bug that showed creatures health petals over the research panel UI
o The tech button used to open the research panel UI has been moved and is now visible during battle.net play
o Fixed drones minerals drop AI on heart treasury
o Drones won't try to fortify tiles that are going to be digged
The map is actually published on the arcade beta servers, please play and rate it there ;)
The multiplayer version is online on the arcade 1.5 servers, however it still lags as hell after some time.
I need help to find a way to open the debug window while playing multi like I wrote in this thread:
http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/map-development/38395-opening-debug-window-in-arcade-1-5-online/
@Bibendus: Go
I've added some debugging stuff to help me to get some data while the map is running.
The most important things would be unit count and the active threads.
I've added an integer array to my map that keeps track of the starts and finishes of every thread. So I'm adding 1 as first action and the last action of every thread needs to be the subtraction of 1. Then add a trigger that gives you a list in a string with the index in the array and the value in the array.
That way you can track ingame, if some threads keep running or didn't finish properly (as I don't know if Blizzard fixed the trigger errors not appearing online).
You should be able to add an equal system to your map.
Also, since you are using a lot of buildings in your map, I give you the hint that a lot of visible building images in the fog can lower the fps. You might want to tinker with a system that hides these actors when they are outside the player's vision. Implementing sonething like that was much easier in my case because it's using fixed areas. But you might be able to order the playable area into multiple square regions and check the necessity of visible actors there.
At least that was the cause of my map slowing down over time.
Oh, and make sure you destroy all created text tags, if they aren't required anymore (like after fading out).
@Ahli634: Go
Triggers are closing correctly, I can see it with the debugger in single player.
The single thread amount is useless, I need to know the average runtime duration of triggers to detect the worst one.
BTW I don't use buildings on my map, just actors for rooms decorationsand units for dungeon walls (I can't remove them for pathing reasons).
Single actors are not heavy as units so I'm fine, the lag is more CPU/memory leak style.
The thing you said about text tags could be the problem, now I'm going to check if they are deleted correctly
Nope, I completely removed the creatures status baloons trigger but it still lags.
I don't know if it lags less or not, btw yesterday I was able to play and finish my first hive keeper competitive game, ok we were 2vs1 but it was awesome :P
I really need to open the new debug thing online, damnit :|
@Bibendus: Go
Im not sure how exactly its called (at school atm), but there is a native function called smth like "open debug window", this allows you to show the debug window in multiplayer.
@Mille25: Go
I worked before 1.5, now it doesn't if more then 1 player are in game and I don't know why :(
It works if I'm playing online alone however, really weird!
Today I released a patch that improves units AI efficiency and it reduced the multiplayer lag for a lot of time and made the game almost playable.. if you want try it ;)
Hive keeper single and multiplayer maps are up on EU and US servers.
I was finally able to complete the tutorial for new players, please try it out ;)
Here you can find the patch notes
http://www.sc2mapster.com/maps/hive-keeper/forum/news/40824-hive-keeper-v0-13-beta-released-single-multiplayer/?unread